May 2, 2011, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks,” —Attorney General Eric Holder answering a question from Darryl Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
December 14, 2010 was the night the ill fated sting Fast and Furious began to unravel.
It was black as pitch in the Arizona desert. A team of border agents was on patrol in a canyon due west of Rio Rico, a place so rugged it’s accessible only by chopper. Because of its topographical hostility, it’s also one of the most dangerous and coveted drug and illegal immigrant smuggling routes in Arizona.
Team members, among them, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, knew there’d be some kind of action that night. There was action every night. The “mules” could show up at any time, making their way to their cartel’s distributors with marijuana, cocaine or methamphetamines strapped to their backs and holding AK-47s.
Not far from where Terry and his fellow agents were positioned, lying in wait for the mules, were “rippers” from a rival cartel. Well-paid mercenaries, many ex-members of Mexican Special Forces, rippers are highly trained and armed to the teeth. This valley is their hijack and kill zone. They seize drug shipments from other cartels and victimize illegal aliens just brought across the border in pursuit of the American Dream.
These kinds of ambushes are why there’s a war between Mexico’s cartels, a war increasingly leeching across the border into the U.S.
As the Border Patrol team waited peering through night vision goggles at the ghostly greenish glow of their surroundings, stories about what happened next diverge. Some claim a drug ambush had begun, and the other had rippers victimizing illegal immigrants.
Regardless, according to a Shooting Incident Report, an agent shotgunned two beanbags at the rippers. The Mexicans immediately returned fire with live automatic weapons fire. One border patrol agent fired back with his pistol, and another with an M-4 rifle. Brian Terry was getting ready to aim when he was hit in the chest, the bullet tearing through his aorta.
He fell hard on the rocky desert floor, unable to feel his legs. Another agent rushed to his side as the others out fired and then rounded up the rippers.
Terry was quickly bleeding out. At almost 250 pounds, he was too heavy to carry out of the valley, which was miles away from civilization anyway, and there wouldn’t be enough time to get an evac chopper in. With the agents unable to stop the bleeding, Terry exsanguinated in that inhospitable patch of hell on earth.
Later found at the scene where the rippers had been were various firearms, two of which were purchased in the U.S. and permitted to “walk” (weapons bought here, given to cartel contacts and allowed to enter Mexico with no way to track them).
Suddenly, the Justice Department and possibly the White House had a major problem on their hands. Someone within Obama’s administration was, in essence, an accomplice to murder.
ATF agents are trained to never, ever let guns being traced get out of their sight. In a sting, firearms are always tracked from point of departure to point of delivery. And when unwitting ATF agents began to track the guns involved in Fast and Furious, they were inexplicably told to “stand down” and let the guns walk. The orders had come from “high up” in Washington, and to the agents involved they were unfathomable and unacceptable.
No one on Terry’s team knew that U.S. gun shop owners had sold arms to “straw” buyers. (Straw buyers are thugs, some with criminal backgrounds, to whom dealers would not usually sell guns because the paperwork would trip them up, but that mysteriously didn’t happen in this case.) ATF agents told the owners to sell the guns.
That didn’t sit well with any of them. They all thought they were being set up. Obama’s agenda for regulating firearms is legendary, and they were certain they were pawns in his gun-control agenda.
ATF agents on the front lines weren’t happy either. In fact, both shop owners and ATF agents called ATF headquarters in Washington and registered their concerns. At least one agent was told that the details of the operation didn’t need to be explained to him and to just do his job. Trouble was, he couldn’t. He’d been told to stand down.
In the mean time, border agents waited anxiously for the U.S. attorney to charge the captured rippers with Terry’s murder. But to their shock and dismay, Holder’s men charged several of them only with illegal re-entry, a felony that normally yields a two-year sentence. Astonishingly, no jail time was handed down. Instead, they were promptly deported. Sadly, trials and convictions were pressed only against the straw buyers for illegally buying guns.
In every respect, Brian Terry’s life had been violently taken from him without reason or purpose, and one has to wonder if he (and countless Mexicans) would be alive today if whomever was calling the shots hadn’t allowed those guns to walk into Mexico.
Whistle blowing ATF agents bravely stepped forward, eager to share their stories. But it wasn’t just agents who were astounded and angry.
Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson had also been cut out of the loop about the most important and secret aspects of Fast and Furious, a mission of which he should have had not only complete knowledge, but control. He had neither. It was an unconscionable and inexplicable omission for someone who heads up a federal department. What happened is analogous to the president ordering a military attack on Iran but not telling the Secretary of Defense.
When he finally got access and read all of the documents relating to the case, Melson appeared secretly before Issa’s committee on July 4th, 2011, and testified that what he read made him “sick to his stomach.” Though pressured to step down by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as the scapegoat, he refused, but was later edged out of his position.
In addition, none of the ATF agents in Mexico were apprised of what was going on because Washington was concerned they might tell the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico or the Mexican government that guns were walking into Mexico.
As we learn more, the more wretched this whole fiasco becomes, and there’s quite possibly a new “cancer growing on the Presidency.”
Arizona gun shop owners, at the encouragement of ATF agents, sold close to 2,000 guns to straw buyers, and perhaps as many as 1,500 are still out there unaccounted for, but doubtless in cartel hands.
This article simply skims the surface, providing a visceral overview of what we’re dealing with. It is the first in a series of stories on what is blossoming into the Fast and Furious mega-scandal—possibly Obama’s Watergate.
When compared to Watergate, the parallels are considerable save for one critical difference. The indignity of Fast and Furious is immeasurably greater. Our agents were and are being shot at and killed, as are innocent Mexicans, by guns sold by U.S. gun shops and allowed to walk into Mexico on the orders of someone “high up” in the U.S. Government.
This is a scandal the seriousness of which eclipses Watergate. We all need to know about and understand Fast and Furious because it is an unmitigated and inexcusable outrage, the product of unthinkable Justice Department and ATF stupidity, or… some nefarious plan that allowed those guns to walk to further an Obama agenda. The reluctance of the Department of Justice to cooperate with Congressional investigators is the stuff of Watergate. But that may well change because Holder has been caught in at best an incomprehensible misunderstand or a lie (see video).
On May 2, 2011, Holder appeared before Daryl Issa’s committee, and when asked when he first knew about Fast and Furious, he replied, “I probably heard about Fast and Furious for the first time over the last few weeks.” [Emphasis mine]
Considering that Agent Terry was killed on December 14, 2010, and that two and perhaps three weapons found at the scene were linked to Fast and Furious, how can we possibly believe that the Attorney General of the United States had heard about this for the “first time” in March or April of this year? The connection between Terry's demise and Fast and Furious has been covered by some media outlets almost since it happened.
In addition, through its subpoenas, the committee found a number of Fast and Furious briefing memos sent to Attorney General Holder directly during July 2010, well over a year ago, fully apprising him of the details and status of the mission. The vast majority of those documents were subpoenaed by and arrived at the committee massively redacted. Whole pages were blacked out, but there was enough there to realize that memos sent directly to Holder, dated July, 2010, are as close to a smoking gun as one can get, and Holder's claim he didn't see them rings hollow.
Now the wrenching showdown begins just as it did with Watergate. The administration does its best to cover up wrong doing while Congress does its best to get at the core of this outrage and bring someone to justice.
While jobs and the economy are still number one on the political issues charts now, don’t be surprised if Fast and Furious quite possibly overtakes them as the details about this incredibly moronic, or worse, agenda-based mission, are brought to the surface by investigating Congressional committees, remarkable investigative reporters such as Sharyl Attkisson of CBS, and growing coverage in more media outlets that can't afford to ignore it, especially in this space. Neither Rep. Issa nor Senator Charles Grassley, Republican ranking member of the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, are about to let this go, and neither will I. Having written extensively about Watergate, this is déjà vu for me, and I look forward to the research.
Both Issa and Holder have exchanged sizzling letters foretelling a very heated session when Holder reappears before Issa’s committee, and gets pressed hard to clarify his answers.
In the next article, we’ll examine Fast and Furious and how it began and evolved.
Someone “high up” in Washington gave orders that cost at least one U.S. agent his life and many Mexicans theirs, and badly bruised our relations with Mexico.
This is about to get very interesting, and it’s information you need to know. This fiasco cannot be blamed on George W. Bush. It happened entirely on Obama’s watch, starting in 2009. As Issa wrote Holder, “You own Fast and Furious.”
